By David

If you are sick of Swimwatch stories about distance conditioning; I do understand. I think this is story number four on the subject. That means it’s time to move on to something else. I did see a contributor to one of the collegeswimming.com chat rooms said he enjoyed our stories about growing up in New Zealand. I wasn’t sure how to take that remark. After all Swimwatch was set up to discuss swimming not the youthful misadventures of life in rural New Zealand. Having said that, it was probably the constraints of country life that forced me into running and swimming huge distances at a young age. There was no movie theatre to go to, no main street to patrol, no shops and no pub.

Even the nearest potential girl friends lived twelve miles away; certainly motivation enough for an occasional long run. My mother seemed to enjoy the thought of her son doing all that running. I was pretty certain that the turn-around point was none of her business. I could spend the rest of this story telling you every detail of that run; the steep climb out of the Ruakaturi Valley, the clouds of dust thrown up by the occasional passing car, the long twisting path beside the Hangaroa River and the solitary one hundred meters of tarmac outside the Marumaru School. It might not have had the perils of Lydiard’s Waiatarua, but the scenic attractions at the turn-around point were better.

But enough of this distraction: how did we decide 100 kilometers a week was the correct build up aerobic conditioning distance? Well, we wanted a weekly distance that satisfied the following criteria.

* Was far enough that it would result in the heart, lung and blood vessel adaptations required from aerobic training.
* Was not so far that the distance could not be covered at a good pace. The distance had to be swum fast; for example 100×100 on 1.30 in 1.07. Plodding through some huge distance each week was not going to result in the required physiological changes.
* Might take a few years to work up to but was a distance sprinters, middle distance and distance swimmers could all be expected to swim.

At the time I was fortunate enough to have access to Lydiard’s advice and a good swimmer, Toni Jeffs, capable of swimming whatever we thought would work. Some of the things we got her to do were pretty moronic. To start with, I explained to Arthur that a mile run took about the same time as quarter of a mile swimming; a 4 to 1 ratio. Obviously, that meant 100 miles running was the equivalent of 25 miles swimming. Arthur agreed and for that season’s ten week build up Toni swam 25 miles (40 kilometers). We obeyed all the other rules such as a hard day, easy day pattern, seven days training and double sessions. Toni managed the distance without much difficulty and that was the problem. The distance was clearly not far enough to cause the discomfort required to stress the athlete; to bring about the required physiological results. Toni was swimming fast enough but it was too easy. She wasn’t getting aerobically fit.

I felt 40 kilometers was well short and suggested to Arthur we needed to double next season’s build up to 80 kilometers. Arthur thought even that was too conservative but agreed to go along with my suggestion. So for the next ten week build up Toni swam 80 kilometers. The results were better, but Arthur was right, it was still too easy. Toni was clearly finding it harder than the 40 kilometers but not hard enough. The speed she swam the 6000 main sets was good but wasn’t causing her to dig as deep as this sort of training normally demands. The distance was still too short.

Stung by getting it wrong again and concerned that the experiment had already taken twelve months I proposed we increase the distance by 50% to 120 kilometers. I will never forget the first few weeks of this build up. It was dreadful. Toni was plodding slowly through impossible sets. She was constantly tired. She complained of sore shoulders, arms, legs; everything really. Her weight training went out the window. She got colds and coughs that wouldn’t go away. None of this was normal. Clearly 120 kilometers was not working. We gave the build up away and after two weeks off moved on to the season’s speed work. Something worked though; that season Toni won the Oceania, New Zealand and New South Wales championships.

“What about splitting the difference?” I asked Arthur. “Let’s set the next build up at 100 kilometers a week.” He agreed and that build up Toni swam 1000 kilometers in the ten weeks. Her speed was good. She was clearly hurting but was recovering sufficiently to hit the next hard day well and she still had sufficient enthusiasm to get through her weight training. In other words the effort, adaptation, discomfort and speed were all very similar to those same factors we had observed a hundred times in some of New Zealand’s best runners during their weeks of 100 miles a week training. When Alison was ranked in the World’s top 10 track runners, many of the runs that made up her 100 miles were at 6.00 minute mile pace. At 100 kilometers Toni was doing the swimming equivalent.

Since then I have helped nine swimmers fast enough to swim in the US National Championships; and Americans set a high standard. All of them tackled ten weeks of 100 kilometers. Only two made it to 1000 (Jane and Toni). A third got to 990 (Skuba). All the others were between 850 and 950. Recently though I have formed the impression that for the very best, 100 kilometers is too easy. We need to progress. Twenty years on and yesterday’s 100 is more likely to be 110 or 120 kilometers today. I just wish Arthur was still around to call. While I’m in Auckland it wouldn’t even be long distance – if you’ll excuse the pun.

And that’s definitely the last word on this subject. For our collegeswimming.com reader I’ll try and remember something odd that happened in the 1960s.